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Will they replace us all?

Published: 09 Aug 2016

If you believe everything you read in the news soon we'll be zooming around like the Jetsons in vacuum tubes according to Elon Musk and taking sub-orbital flights to get to Australia from Los Angeles in 20 minutes if Sir Branson has his way. Cool huh?

Technology is travelling at light speed and soon it seems that they will have a gadget and robot for every possible human need or job.

Everyday jobs. Jobs that we all pass by without a thought but if they disappeared would put hundreds of thousands potentially millions of workers into unemployment. It seems that there are no forever jobs anymore.

To quote the great Seth Godin "The good jobs I’m talking about are the ones that our parents were used to. Steady, consistent factory work. The sort of middle class job you could build a life around. Jobs where you do what you’re told, an honest day’s work, and get rewarded for it.

Those jobs. Where did they go? ... First, if you (the owner of the means of production, the boss, the industrialist) can find a supplier who can make a part for less, you will, and you did.

Second, once you can parcel work among your employees, you can measure them ever more closely and figure out how to maximize what you get (and minimize what you pay).

Third, computers make patient, consistent, cheap workers. When you can train a CNC machine or a spreadsheet to do a job better than a person can, odds are you will." You can read Seth's full blog post here >

When all of the manual jobs start to disappear who will we blame? Did Kenwood with its Magimix food processor start the human labour decline? Do we all need to take up night classes and embrace Raspberry Pi and Python so that we don't get left behind?

It seems that there is fast appearing a definite shift ni the way that businesses operate, with employees which are tasked with monitoring and optimising lean manufacturing will one day we're sure monitor and optimise themselves out of a job as AI takes over spotting areas for improvement that the human cant'

But what about the areas of work that a robot cannot do? We no longer get a 'Good morning' and smile from part-time worker Joanna at ASDA; Cows will never again be milked by humans, instead 'connecting' with a machine that will not be able to recognise if the cow does not feel like milking that day; or what about automatic cars which we are sure will eventually lead to the desolation of the black cabbie in the not too distant future?

The impact of robots performing jobs for us is not simply an immediate loss of jobs effect either. HR departments will be smaller as we do not envisage AI needing 121's or probationary review meetings. The staff canteen will be an altogether much quieter affair, unless they wheel in Bertha from milk packing for an oil refuel?

Who knows what they future employer employee landscape will look like. We're pretty excited about zooming around in vacuum tubes, we just hope we can afford the fare.